The Silken Backpack: Starting off with an Injury and an Encounter with one of the 3 Most Beautiful Views of Japan

May of 2005, I went for a crazy week of backpacking all over West Honshu and across Shikoku (Ok, review: Japan has 4 main islands, the biggest is Honshu followed by Hokkaido then Kyushu and the smallest Shikoku). That week was one of the most important weeks for a working Japanese, the Golden Week. Its the whole week of holiday when everybody packs up their stuff and go somewhere to remind themselves that their lives are not wholly constituted of work and ippai man en. Naturally this is also the time when all forms of transportation and accomodation raise their prices to the roof.

Knowing these, the gang decided to go the cheapest way, meaning go at the end of Golden Week.

So May 4, 2005, Sophie and I asked Mam Pia if we could sleep over at her house since its closer to Kita Senri eki and we had our bus to Hiroshima at 7:30 in the freaking morning. So we slept over at her house with the intention of waking up at 5 in the morning.

May 5, Intention realized. We woke up at 5 am and got ready to walk to Kita Senri. On the way to the station, we had to cut through a park and while going down the dirt and wood staircase I tripped and I swear I heard a crack. A pain shot up my ankle and I thought I broke my ruddy foot I got soo dizzy and I thought I was gonna faint. Sophie kinda freaked out and told me to snap out of it, get up and eat bread all at the same time. I felt better and I realized I could move my foot only it really hurts, I was able to walk anyway so even if it hurts I just thought "spiritual sacrifice" and we ventured on. We took the train to Osaka Umeda and found the bus station in good time. The bus was a cool double decker and we sat on the upper deck and I got the window seat so I had a pretty good time. We arrived in Hiroshima station 5 hours later and met up with Viviane, Ewa and Katya.

The plan of the day was to go to Miyajima (Miyajima is an island off Hiroshima, a meager 10 minute ferry boat ride) Miyajima’s main feature is the floating torii and Itsukushima Shrine. This is one of the 3 most beautiful places in all of Japan. The torii (Red Shinto gate) and the shrine is built on the shore, so at low tide you can walk up to the torii and touch it or put coins in between the small barnacles that had formed on the legs of the torii. But at hightide, the water comes in and covers a portion of the legs and so it appears that the torii is floating on water. It’s really very pretty.

From The Silken Backpack

Coins in the barnacles

After we all met in Hiroshima station, we put our luggages in the coin lockers and took a train to Miyajima guchi where the port and the ferries going to Miyajima are. We took the ferry and arrived in Miyajima at low tide so we were able to go and touch the torii (its supposed to bring you luck)

From The Silken Backpack

People digging in the beach, the torii at low tide, more coins and shrine on legs

Miyajima is also famous for all the deers that roam freely around the area, which also means that people have to be careful not to step on deer dung. We walked along side the deers and had one of them try to steal Ewa’s bag.

From The Silken Backpack

The culprit

We were walking along the beach and saw all these people curiously digging into the sand for I dont know what. We bought tickets to get into the shrine and we spent the time walking around it. It was a regular shrine except it s partly built on stilt-like trunks coz at high tide, water would also come up to about 5 to 10 inches below the floor.

Sophie was on a mission. She wanted to go up as many mountains in Japan as she can, sooo… we went up Mt. Misen. This is a mountain about an hour or 2 hike up where the top provides an excellent 360 degrees view of Miyajima island and a part of Hiroshima. Because of my ankle, the climb up was H-E-L-L. But after a few struggles we were getting close to the top.

We passed by a small temple where there was a fire caused by boiling water (One of the temple’s features was a water vat where the water is said to have been kept simmering for almost a hundred years). Sadly the water boiled over and caused the fire. When we got there all we saw were charred wood and a lot of firemen and TV crews. It was sad we didnt even get to see it before it got burned, but of course, what's sadder was that it burned at all.

From The Silken Backpack

Remains of the temple's water vat and the fire men

We passed the temple and continued our hike up the mountain until finally we reached the top (we were by this time clutching walking sticks like Gandalf) the top is just a few huge rocks and a small 2-story viewing structure from where you can see the whole island. The view was breath taking and we took quite a lot of photos and took a rest. (The price of water in the small store here is outrageously expensive) After a while we decided to get down the mountain as it was already getting dark.
If going up was hell for me, going down was even worse. I had to take the cable car to get down the mountain, and from there we took the bus to go back to the shrine and the torii.

From The Silken Backpack

Views from the top, Viviane the mountain lady and blessed cable cars

This time the tide has come in and the floating torii and shrine were really very beautiful and a sight to behold. It truly is one of the most beautiful places in Japan that Ive seen.